


A Study in Elements

by merlin



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:30:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merlin/pseuds/merlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson dreams of the desert. (AU set in A:tLA universe.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

John dreams of the desert. 

John dreams of scorching heat and the endless sands and the men singing along to old Ember Island recordings at the top of their lungs, John laughing as Norman screeched the falsetto notes--

And then they flipped. Out of nowhere, a towering wave of sand at least ten metros high gushed into their truck, stopping up the engine and weapons and throats. John dreams of the desert, flowing into Norman's mouth as their eyes met, too quickly for either of them to even scream--

John wakes. In the morning, after another round of dreams about sand and sunlight, he bends the cold sweat out of his hair and sheets, and watches it swirl down the bathroom drain.

* * *

The city is made of noise. After the blinding silence of the desert, Union City is nothing but satomobiles and people of all shapes, sizes, colours and elements. John wraps himself further in the soft, warm wool of his jumper as he pushes through the flood of humans and enters the hospital.

His meeting with Stamford had been entirely accidental, a chance encounter in a park that left both of them with smiles on their faces and a possibility in the air. John limps down the once-familiar corridors, absently noting the vague whisper of water pipes in the walls beside him, and steps into the room Stamford had told him to look for.

"The Desert Wars," says a low voice, and John twitches to attention.

"Excuse me?" he says, instead of letting his instinct and nerves respond in the way they want to.

The speaker is a tall, pale man with tousled dark hair. He is gazing at John with eyes the colour of polar ice. "You were in the Desert Wars," he repeats. "Water bender, mostly in the field of healing, but occasionally in combat when the situation called for it." The man comes closer. "Honourable discharge because of the damage to your shoulder and leg, and a resulting psychological setback to your not-inconsiderable bending prowess. You're here because of a recommendation by Mike Stamford."

John stares at him. "How-"

The man's lips curve into a sleek bow of pleasure, and launches into a lengthy explanation about tan lines. All the while, his hands never stop moving; distilling coloured liquids, writing down notes in a cramped, spiky hand, rolling the scroll up and slipping it into the pocket of his long coat. John watches as he wraps a scarf neatly around his neck, and realises that the man is about to leave.

"Surely potential flatmates should at least know each other's names," John says, and the man pauses, the door in mid-slide.

"I'm Sherlock Holmes," he says. "I'll see you tomorrow at two-two-one Baker Street." And then he winks, a flash of winter in his eyes, and the door slides shut behind him.

* * *

Baker Street is a long road that was most definitely not named after its main industry: noodles. John has a leisurely breakfast of shrimp dumpling noodles at number 176 before walking up the street to where Sherlock Holmes is getting out of a taxi. It's drawn by a sleepy-looking goat-rhino, which snorts at John as he passes.

"Good morning," Holmes says amiably as they approach the door to 221.

"Good morning," John replies. "I didn't know it was possible to afford lodging in this area at all."

"The landlady Mrs Hudson is a former client of mine, so she's offering much lower rent than usual."

The door opens, and the question - client? - collides with the back of John's teeth as he snaps his mouth shut. An older lady gives Holmes a warm hug and shakes John's hand, and walks them through the upstairs flat - 221B. John falls in love with the place immediately, with its creaky staircase and large windows. They sign the lease over steaming cups of jasmine tea, and as Mrs Hudson carries the tray away, she cautions them not to expect any housekeeping from her.

They move in over the next few days, and John is reminded just how little he has; he doesn't even have a gun to show for his time in the desert. The advantage of being a bender is that one's weapon is all around, unless, of course, one is trapped in an environment in which certain elements are naturally missing. He packs all his things into five boxes, and Stamford is more than happy to help bring them across the city to Baker Street. John still dreams of the desert, but sometimes he dreams instead of ice.

John's new flatmate - "you can call me Sherlock" - has already claimed the smaller leather chair for himself. "Tell me about blood bending," he says one afternoon, barely two weeks into their new home, and John goes cold.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he tells Sherlock, who just continues to look at him without a single change in expression, like he already knows the truth and is just waiting for John to say it out loud. John adds, "Blood bending is illegal. It has been for over fifty years."

Sherlock shakes his head. He has very sharp cheekbones. "Legalities are but a mere inconvenience people impose upon themselves." He looks like he's about to say more, but the overhead whine of a police hovercraft distracts them both. A few minutes later, a man lets himself into the flat. He has greying hair and the distinctive armour of the metal bending elite force.

"Lestrade," Sherlock greets cautiously as he gets to his feet.

"Serial suicides," Lestrade says with absolutely no preamble.

"Saw the news. Boring."

"Unknown poison. Foaming at the mouth."

"Still boring."

"Victims completely unrelated."

"Barely passable."

"There's a clue."

Sherlock looks up at this. "Murder?"

"Murder."

"I'll be there later," Sherlock says. "Now hurry along; your hovercraft is scaring the cats."

Lestrade nods politely at John, and leaves. Sherlock watches as the hovercraft whirrs away, flooding the street with sunlight again, and smiles broadly at John. "A quadruple murder!" He is bouncing on his toes, obviously filled with glee, and John can't help but wonder what his flatmate does for a living. Surely he isn't one of the metal benders; John can't picture Sherlock in the black and bronze armour. The man in question has already disappeared out the door.

As John opens the Union Times and begins his daily search for a job that can use a broken bender-healer, Sherlock suddenly clatters back up the stairs.

"You were in the military," he declares, staring right at John.

John raises his eyebrows. "Yes, I was."

"It was dangerous, wasn't it?"

"Extremely."

Sherlock looks at him. If John tries, he knows he can hear the other man's heart. Feel it beat through the metre of air that separates them.

"Do you miss it?" Sherlock asks, and holds out John's coat. Come with me, Sherlock's long fingers say, gripping the worn fabric. John knows next to nothing about this man with eyes like the North Pole, only that he apparently works for the Union City police and likes to keep chemical experiments in the kitchen. John thinks about the desert. John looks at Sherlock.

John takes his coat, and the door to 221B closes behind them.


	2. Chapter 2

The letters are three feet high and scorched unevenly into the wall. Sherlock is peering at the body, a woman dressed in one of the garishly colored form-fitting dresses that have somehow become extremely prevalent while John was away.

"T. A. X.," Anderson reads out loud from behind them. "Clearly someone wasn't paying their interest on a loan from a fire bending triad."

Sherlock stands and strides to the door, sliding it shut with a slam. "What do you think, Dr Watson?" he says, turning to John, who stares at him blankly. "Come on, you're a healer. Examine the body!"

John obliges, and states his findings - the cause of death was drowning, which could have been due to water bending, but the smell of vomit was pervasive enough to point to that as the substance in question. There was no scent of alcohol, however, which meant that it had either been fits, or poisoning. Sherlock nods slightly. Then he whirls on Lestrade.

"The words weren't written by the killer," Sherlock says definitively. "They were written by her."

Lestrade's mouth falls open. "What? How?"

"The style and colour of her qipao follow the latest runway trends almost exactly, which shows a large interest in looking current and fashionable, but it hasn't been tailored to fit her, probably due to a lack of finances to do so - silk tailors in Union City don't come cheap. Therefore she got this one either as a gift - unlikely as she would have spent the money on alteration - or second-hand, indicating a lack of means to finance her clotheshorse tendencies. Her jewellery, however, is made of high-grade platinum, which is extremely expensive - silver or silver-plated metal would look identical, so she must have invested in the metal specifically because of its properties: long-lasting (something that wouldn't concern someone whose tastes only last one season) and an extremely high melting point, an extremely important consideration for someone who deals with high temperatures on their person on a daily basis. Ergo, fire bender, who wrote those letters as she died. They're too low on the wall for someone of her height to write while standing, and someone with her level of skill would have written it smaller if she hadn't been under duress - in this case, the looming prospect of death."

He sucks in a deep breath, and smiles widely with his lips pressed together at his audience of two. "Skill?" Lestrade murmurs.

"Obvious," Sherlock says, flapping a long-fingered hand.

"Not to me," John feels the need to say.

Sherlock shoots him an unreadable glance. "If she had been a bad bender, her hands would be covered in burn scars." He turns back to Lestrade. "Your proof of murder is gone. It could very well be a suicide note. I need to think." And then he's gone, clattering down the wooden stairs.

Lestrade calls his team in, and John stands quietly where he was as people in the bronze and black uniforms of the police force push past him into the room. He suddenly feels very alone.

* * *

As John limps his way out of the small shophouse and down the road, a shiny black satomobile pulls up beside him. John's never seen a black mobile before; they're always a colour representative of the owner's natural bending element, a company's corporate colours, or simply a favourite colour.

A woman is sitting inside the mobile. "Do get in," she says, not looking up from the scroll she's studying intently. John looks around. There is nobody around at all, nobody to see him get into a strange vehicle. The woman smiles at him briefly, then looks back at her scroll.

John gets into the mobile.

He ends up in an empty gymnasium right beside the pro bending arena. There's a strong scent of lemon cleaner with the underlying smell of sweat and physical exertion, the kind that doesn't go away even after copious amounts of scrubbing and chemicals. There's also a man in a long formal robe, holding a black parasol, standing in the middle of the centre ring.

"Good evening, Dr Watson," he says amiably. John eyes him. "I trust your time back in Union City has been… fruitful."

John simply waits. The man's smile widens. "How do you find two-twenty-one-B Baker Street?"

"I find it's none of your business," John replies. He should feel uneasy, he thinks. He should be frankly terrified that he's alone in an unlit gymnasium with a strange man who knows so much about him. But the truth is that he isn't - at all.

The man twirls his parasol. "You and I have a mutual… acquaintance," he explains. "A certain Sherlock Holmes."

"Who are you?"

"I am, shall we say, the closest thing he has to a friend." The man pauses, and John suspects it's entirely for dramatic effect. "An enemy. His arch-enemy, he would probably say. He does tend towards the hyperbole."

"It certainly takes one to know one."

The man's smile doesn't falter. "I would like to propose an exchange. A fair exchange. You, Doctor, are not a wealthy man. I, however, am." Another dramatic pause. "I would like to help you out."

They look at each other in silence, which John breaks by asking, "What do you want from me?"

"Information," the man says. "I simply wish to know what Sherlock Holmes is - shall we say - up to."

John doesn't even think about it. "Not interested."

"You're certainly very loyal to a man you barely know."

"I'm no- I'm not loyal. I'm just not interested." He turns to go. "Thank you for your… hospitality."

He's barely taken five steps towards the door when the man speaks up again. "Your bending doesn't work," he states blandly.

John freezes. "Excuse me?"

Up close, the man's robes are clearly pure silk, dyed a deep black that shines almost blue in the dim light streaming in from the high windows. "You're a water bender," the man murmurs. "And no water bender trained in combat goes about his day without a flask of liquid on his person. You don't have this flask."

John blinks rapidly. "There's water everywhere," he rasps. "Pipes and plumbing. This is a big city."

The man smiles grimly. "You were in the desert, Dr Watson. You of all people know that water cannot be taken for granted. And yet here you are, perfectly calm despite not knowing for sure if you have any water at hand." He leans back, and John realises how close the man had been. "No, I think you're either extremely confident in your ability to bend even the slightest amount of liquid to your advantage, or it's the other way round - you can't bend anything except the slightest amount of liquid."

There's a vein running down the side of the stranger's neck. John watches it pulse gently, and lets out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. "I've heard enough," he says.

As he walks out the door, he hears the man call out, "The desert needs only a small amount of rain to bloom."

* * *

There's a note stuck to the door of 221B. John spots it as he climbs the staircase. It's written on the back of a cheap flyer, the kind given out on the street to advertise for shops or pro bending events. The handwriting is familiar, with short, sharp flourishes on the diagonals.

"Found a lead," the note says. "Come at once if convenient."

John turns the flyer back around. It advertises a fight that very evening, beginning in an hour, between the underdog Mighty Jaguar-Narwhals team and the crowd favorite, the Bananadile Brothers. John spends a few seconds wondering why pro bending teams always name themselves after animals. Then he spots it.

There is another line written just above the match information: "If inconvenient, come anyway."


End file.
